Salsa’s Rules as Code presentation
At last year’s GovCMS Mega Meetup in November 2023, Salsa was honoured to present to the GovCMS community. The topic: Rules as Code, or RaC.
Summary of the Rules as Code presentation
In this presentation, Salsa’s Founding Director Alfred Deeb talks about the application of Rules as Code (RaC) within GovCMS to enhance personalised digital experiences for citizens. The presentation outlines the rationale behind RaC, its workings, real-world applications and resources for getting started. Below is a summary of the key points.
Introduction
Alfred introduces the topic and mentions support from colleagues Con Fountas, Steve Worley, and Pia , whose vision in late 2021 inspired the RaC journey.
Context for RaC
The presentation starts with the importance of government responsibilities in delivering information and services. It highlights the opportunity to use GovCMS for personalised citizen experiences, especially regarding eligibility and entitlements to government services.
What is Rules as Code?
RaC is described as a process of converting legislation, regulations and policies into machine-readable code so computers can understand and use them.
Real-world use cases
Alfred provides an overview of examples from the United States, Canada, Belgium, France, Australia and New Zealand to show how RaC is used globally to improve citizen experiences across various domains such as benefits eligibility, policy impact assessment and compliance checking.
Salsa Digital projects
Next, Alfred shares details on projects Salsa Digital has worked on, including:
Getting started with RaC
The presentation encourages attendees to start small with well-defined rule sets and to use the service design and delivery process to develop, test and iterate on RaC solutions.
Resources and community
Alfred highlights resources like the newly established RaC , a community Slack channel, and Salsa Digital's Rules as Code insights newsletter to support those interested in exploring RaC further.
Final words
Quoting Simon Sinek, Alfred encourages attendees to start small and dream big to create better, more personalised digital experiences for citizens through the application of RaC. He urges people to start conversations, share ideas and engage with GovCMS and the broader community to learn and grow together in the application of RaC.